Massimo, the Magician | Bracket 3 Jeskai Spellslinging Sabotage

Massimo, the Magician | Art by Jodie Muir

In Bloomburrow, Wizards of the Coast included a little guy called Flubs, the Fool. Maybe you’ve heard of him! His silly pose was a callback to The Fool from the Tarot, which could have been a one-off, but the designers knew that something had been started. Today’s card (alongside Homer, the Hermit) confirms the continuation! We’ll see what fate has in store for this Bracket 3 -Upgraded deck list (roughly judged based on consistency), wherein we get to build our own saboteurs…

What Does Massimo, the Magician Do?

Massimo, the Magician is a three-mana 3/2 Cat Wizard with no keywords and just one ability. Whenever Massimo or another creature enters, you can exile an instant or sorcery that has a mana value of one from your graveyard. If you do, the creature gains “Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, copy the exiled card. You may cast the copy without paying its mana cost.”

The immediate comparison point is Katilda and Lier, a deck focused on using your creatures to recast spells from your graveyard. In a similar vein is Bria, Riptide Rogue, a creature that leans aggressive while encouraging noncreature casting. If you spliced these two and squinted, you might get close, but there’s another tidbit to this cat.

There was a mechanic way back in Dragon’s Maze called cipher. It was the Dimir mechanic and only went on instants and sorceries, like Whispering Madness. Once you cast it, you then exiled it “encoded” on a creature you control, which could cast the spell when it did combat damage. Cipher doesn’t show up in big numbers, because the effect needs to be relevant at sorcery speed after combat is over, and there aren't a lot of those. Massimo is basically ciphering one-mana spells for us, and we’ll need to keep in mind how that affects the build.

Finally, because the deck is full of one-mana spells, the deck has to keep the mana base tight and focused on colored mana (so no Sol Ring here). Because of how low to the ground and aggressive it is, I also chose to (mostly) avoid cards with two or more of the same-colored pip in their casting cost.

Setting up Saboteurs

First, much like the most popular Dimir commander archetype, Massimo needs cheap, evasive creatures. There are four Triton Shorestalker variants at the exact same mana cost. There are a lot more unblockable creatures at two mana, some of which synergize with our graveyard Spellslinger themes—Mercurial Spelldancer and Shoreline Looter especially. Blue really shines in this part of the deck, but Hardened Academic breaks up the monotony. Flying and haste helps him get value immediately, and the Massimo triggers will slowly grow the threats (so it is sometimes correct to exile a spell even if you know it won’t get cast).

For most graveyard decks, there’s a need to get cards into the graveyard indirectly via mill, discard, or Entomb effects. Those are still helpful here, but hardly necessary when the spells we want in the graveyard only cost a single mana. All the same, getting a few more options is always good. Faithless Looting and Irreverent Gremlin can help discard to get cards into the ‘yard strategically. Thought Scour and Stream of Thought are Massimo-legal targets that can repeatedly mill to stock up on possible spells to encode. Quintorius, History Chaser does both!

Finally, the little guys need some support. Normally, the commander is the one most in need of Lightning Greaves and friends, but he’ll have to share—we definitely want our saboteurs to strike fast to get the value train rolling. Massimo, the Magician lacks evasion, and some of our flyers will have to worry about Dragons, Angels, or just a lot of Birds. Gossip's Talent will help there, always relevant because of our commander, with a lot of incidental value along the way. Meanwhile, Kykar, Zephyr Awakener can reset a saboteur who lacked a spell or needs an upgrade or just make more saboteurs wholecloth.

Okay, so Massimo’s class is in session. Let’s take a look at the lesson plan.

The Countdown is at 1…

With the deck built around one-mana instants and sorceries, we’ll look there first for our utility needs. Red and white can pick up removal pretty handily. Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares aplenty there, but a special shoutout to some other versatile removal options. Reckless Air Strike can plink a random bird or blow up a mana rock, while Light of Hope can grow a creature, remove an enchantment, or just gain some life in a pinch.

As for card draw, we’ve got Opt and friends, plus Otherworldly Gaze. Casting these once is fine value, casting them every turn will keep us ahead of the game. Red throws in Faithless Looting for graveyard churn and Magmatic Insight to keep lands from becoming dead draws. White gets to toss in Honor as a decent cantrip that also buffs our saboteurs to speed up the clock. A lot of versions of this deck will run Archmage Emeritus as an easy pick, but I want to go a little lower to the ground and keep most creatures evasive, so I picked Vega, the Watcher instead.

As previously mentioned, spells with additional costs can still work for Massimo—there aren’t a lot of cards with kicker, spree, or tiered that we really want to run, but the ones we do are huge value. Requisition Raid can remove an artifact and/or an enchantment while growing the team. Three Steps Ahead is one of the only counterspells Massimo can make use of, since the creature can still draw cards and make clones with the other modes. Then, of course, there's Great Train Heist, which can singlehandedly win the game. We won’t get the benefit of making Treasure tokens until after the first combat step, but the fact that we’ll get to keep making extra combats and piling on the Treasure making effects (or buffing the team) is huge.

How to Get to Zero?

Once rolling like this, the deck is trying to keep on the pressure and maintain the value. The power is in the card quality and repetition. Casting Boltwave, Serum Visions, or Helping Hand once in a game is fine—casting them all four times will kneecap the table while putting you in the lead. The deck is land-light at 34 due to the low curve and high draw, with Signets and Talismans to push ahead, but it also has Professional Face-Breaker to ramp further with every saboteur trigger and Storm-Kiln Artist for every magecraft trigger.

The deck has a few different win conditions that can take the snowball and turn it into a snow-boulder. Shadow of the Goblin and Firespitter Whelp turn the three or four spells from our saboteurs every turn into bonus damage. Kykar, Wind's Fury and Kykar, Zephyr Awakener make 1/1 birds to grind out more value, while the only card in the deck over four mana or with two of the same colored pip, Rite of the Dragoncaller, makes 5/5 Dragons to end the game next turn. If we somehow don’t draw into those, the unblockable creatures will keep plinking away (with some of them like Electrostatic Infantry and Sprite Dragon quickly growing into “must-kill” threats).

And with that, the trick is complete.

Massimo, the Magician Deck List

Conclusion

I tried to keep the focus on the spells and saboteurs, but the game plan has a lot of possible variance. There is a high density of creatures with power 2 or less and a graveyard hook that could make cards like Raise the Past a way to either fully recover or swarm the board all at once to press the endgame. The number of unblockable creatures with saboteur effects makes extra combat spells like Waves of Aggression or Full Throttle a top tier pick-up. Heck, going all-in on a Wizard theme thanks to Harmonic Prodigy alongside inclusions like Naban, Dean of Iteration has merit. There are a lot of possibilities here, and it makes for a fun deckbuilding puzzle. I’m excited to see how it unfolds.

Until next time!